FIVE months before the general election upon which Iraq’s future hinges, escalating violence and kidnappings have left the Iraqis in charge of the ballot unable to move freely round the country.

Selected and trained by the United Nations, Iraq’s Independent Electoral Commission is still virtually confined to Baghdad’s high-security Green Zone, with senior officials sent out of the country for UN training.

So dangerous is it for the nascent body’s seven commissioners to travel in a country where all government, US or UN-backed officials are assassination targets that some — at huge risk — occasionally abandon their armed bodyguards and travel incognito.Without such drastic measures the seven Iraqis, who include two women, believe they would have been unable to begin hiring election officials, establishing polling booths and drafting the electoral laws for the 275-member Iraqi National Assembly.

“It’s more risky to go with guards. We prefer to go as Iraqi citizens because with escorts and formal military protection we can’t do anything,” said Hussein Hindawi, 56, a former journalist and human rights worker who is now on the commission. “We try to be anonymous. We know the people. We know the country. We have friends and family. We can use other kinds of cars, and get around by taxis.”

With a budget of £180million, the commission is expected to organise up to 9,000 polling stations, each staffed by at least four people. Its headquarters will be a former military museum, undergoing a £2 million refit, within the Green Zone.

The commission was set up by the old US-led occupation authority that predated Iyad Allawi’s interim Government. This was a deliberate attempt to forestall accusations of interference.

Among its many difficult decisions are how to register voters in a country that has had neither democratic elections nor a proper census for decades and how to manage a proportional representation system that will turn the country into one huge electoral district with hundreds of candidates on one list.

It must also decide whether Iraqis living overseas can participate — which UN technical experts say would be “almost impossible” to arrange in time.

But the overwhelming concern is security, with many doubting that elections can be held in towns such as Fallujah and Ramadi, which remain intensely hostile to US and Iraqi government forces.

Elsewhere, key roads south and west of the capital are plagued by kidnappers and bandits while Baghdad’s vast Sadr City slum, a stronghold of the renegade cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, is a war zone-in-waiting with roadside booby traps on every corner to ambush US and Iraqi government forces should they decide to move in on his Mahdi Army militia.

Western diplomats bravely insist that other countries have held elections amid violence, pointing out that security measures can be taken, such as moving polling stations in troubled areas such as Fallujah to secure locations.

At the weekend Dr Allawi mooted an alternative possibility, also floated by Lieutenant- General Thomas Metz, operations chief of the 150,000 US-led troops in Iraq: that elections could be prevented or delayed in Fallujah without prejudicing the overall result.

Such suggestions do not go down well with the electoral commission, whose members are keen to avoid prime ministerial or military interference.

“It’s an opinion,” Mr Hindawi told The Times yesterday, in a diplomatic response to Dr Allawi’s suggestion. “Many military people in the multinational forces speak about the elections; they are free to say what they want. For us, we do not accept any kind of declaration regarding the date, the count and so on. We are the unique authority for the elections.”

To promote January’s elections the commission will open an advertising campaign on September 25, with the slogan “Your Voice is the Future”.

Pointing to the undoubted widespread support among the Iraqi public for the elections, one senior US diplomat said that momentum would be vital. “A lot is going to depend on whether there is a buzz. If there is none, then all the negatives will play a very large role in compromising the result,” the diplomat said.

“But there is beginning to be something of a buzz. If this builds then the atmosphere will get better.”

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